Officers minded to recommend refusal for speculative development on the Mansfield open space

Proposed
speculative housing development on the Mansfield designated open space

Comment by the
Dartmouth Park Conservation Area Advisory Committee

Both the National
Planning Policy Framework and planning law require that applications for
planning permission must be determined in accordance with the development plan
unless material conditions indicate otherwise. [1]The Officers’ recommendation to refuse
permission shouldn’t, therefore, come as any real surprise.

The
site has been designated as open space in successive development plans, most
recently in the Local Development Framework.The importance of the site to the character of the Conservation Area
features strongly in our Statement.Each
of these plans was subjected to full public consultation.

No
matter how much money the property speculators throw at their highly misleading
propaganda, remodelling a bit of that huge white elephant of a club house to
include a small gym facility simply can’t be a ‘material condition’ permitting
a major departure from the provisions of the LDF.

There
isn’t any planning reason why MBC shouldn’t devote part of its huge club house to
an indoor gym within.Never has
been.No planning application is/was
required to do it.

The
club house, the bauble offered for allowing a previous speculative development,
is only forty years old.The claim that
eight large luxury houses with associated private gardens, private roads and
private off street parking occupying most of what is left of the real open
space is necessary to ‘enable’ the remodelling and equipping of a small area of
the club for an indoor gym is laughable.If MBC had proposed a change of use of a bit of the huge club house so
it could be sold off for housing, one might have looked sympathetically at the
proposal.What the speculators are
proposing has absolutely nothing to do with ‘enabling’ a gym.Only a fraction of the huge profits envisaged
would be spent on securing the future of the club house.

Even
had this not been designated open space, the site has been dedicated to outdoor
sport and recreation for almost a hundred and forty years when Baroness Angela
Burdett-Coutts first made it available for community use, the proposed ending of all
outdoor sport and recreation in favour of a small indoor gym with a doubtful
future would be contrary to planning policy.As the LDF makes clear, we are pretty much at saturation point in terms
of small gyms which charge for admission.As a joint NHS/Camden study shows, what we need is more outdoor sport
and recreation.The last thing the site
needs is more land buried under tarmac and concrete.

The
reality is almost half the site has already, in effect, been sold off to the
property speculators subject only to the grant of planning permission.You wouldn’t credit it from either the
application or the propaganda but it is the speculators who are in control not
MBC.As we know from the block of flats
on the Athlone House site, so called ‘enabling’ developments don’t always
deliver.

Allowing
speculative development on this designated open space to ‘enable’ something
people might be persuaded is a good thing would set a terrible precedent which
would eventually fatally undermine the character of the Conservation Area.Residents at the western end of Croftdown
Road have only to look out of their back windows to see how true this is.

Speculative
planning applications by developers hoping to make a killing isn’t anyway the
right way to move forward.In the words
of the first of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) core principles
(para 17) future land use must be genuinely plan-led, empowering local people to shape their
surroundings, with succinct local and neighbourhood plans setting out a
positive vision for the future of the area. Plans should be kept up-to-date,
and be based on joint working and co-operation to address larger than local
issues. They should provide a practical framework within which decisions on
planning applications can be made with a high degree of predictability and
efficiency

The confirmation on Friday
that the site has been designated as a community asset adds an important new
tool to the community’s armoury.This is
Camden’s first designation of a private site under the recent Localism Act and
one of the first in the country.This
provision of the Localism Act has yet to be tested.We will have to wait and see how important it
is.It will certainly give the community
access to the resources it needs to ensure a positive future for the site if
the MBC fails.Access which the current
private company can’t, by definition, have.

It
is not over yet.The Development Control
Committee has still to confirm the refusal and the community will want to make
its voice heard when it does.There is
still time for those opposed to the scheme to stand up and be counted.There will doubtless also be an appeal but
the Inspector too is required to determine in accordance with the development
plan unless material conditions indicate otherwise.An experienced Planning Inspector shouldn’t
have any problem seeing through the propaganda the developers have used to try
to divide our community.